Spiegel Online published two days ago an excellent article by science journalist Axel Bojanowski on the widespread “disinformation surrounding climate change” and the profit made from the hyping and exaggeration of weather extremes.

Grateful that @Axel_Bojanowski via @SPIEGELONLINEis allowed to correctly report on the science of climate change, and even if he’ll be confronted by people foaming at the mouth.”

Recently the Swiss meteorologist Kachelmann came under harsh attack from Potsdam scientist Stefan Rahmstorf and a leading German Green politician – for having the nerve to give the real facts on storm frequency and intensity on a television talk round that included Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber.

Seasoned journalist Michael Miersch also tweeted: “The best that I’ve ever read on the instrumentalization of climate change.”

German Railway: climate change as a cover for poor management

Bojanowski begins by describing how today the German Railway (Deutsche Bundesbahn) – once heralded for its outstanding punctuality and overall efficiency – has discovered how to use climate change to deflect blame away from its recent poor management, which over the years has often led to lousy service.

Over the years, the Bundesbahn has made the maintenance of its tracks a victim to cost cutting. Trees and vegetation along the tracks no longer get sufficiently cut back, and so it is common for routes to get blocked during stormy weather. What better excuse than climate change could the Deutsche Bahn have to explain all the disruptions?

Data in fact show no increasing trend in extreme weather

All the cancellations, service shutdowns and delays are of course due to ever increasing storm intensity and frequency, the Deutsche Bahn management likes to claim, and they get the full backing of the media, policymakers and alarmist climate scientists. Yet Bojanowski calls out these claims by the Bundesbahn for what they are: lame excuses based on hyped up science.

The Spiegel journalist writes that a number of scientists have shown that there has in fact been no increase in storm intensity and frequency in Europe, commenting:

That’s amazing, as many scientists anticipate fewer storms in Central Europe as a consequence of climate change.”

Munich Re bilking the public with climate hype?

Another industry caught hyping up extreme weather activity is the reinsurance industry, which insures regular insurance companies against major claims events. The reason for the added hype: justification for hefty premium increases, Bojanowski suggests.

Munich Re admits no real climate signal

One company Bojanowski cites is the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, which annually publishes a report on “natural catastrophes”, in which the company likes to blame climate change, cite alarmist experts and claim there is today a “new normal”. When asked by Spiegel to comment concerning data showing that it isn’t really so, a climate expert from Munch Re was forced to admit:

The blanket statement that weather-dependent damages worldwide show a climate signal cannot be supported.”

So even the Munich Re knows their claims are hype, yet they continue preaching climate doom and gloom.

Bojanowski also accuses the reinsurers and alarmist climate scientists of “staying silent on claims from the scientific community that it’s all very much in dispute“.

The Spiegel journalist also describes how companies selling environmental products also shamelessly hype climate change in order to get municipalities and cities to invest more in climate protection and environmental systems. Such companies often pay (handsomely) alarmist scientists, such as those from the Potsdam Institute, to spread fear over a rapidly approaching climate doom.

Environmental companies spreading climate hype

Recently there was a panel of climate experts at the IFAT industrial trade fair for wastewater technology, which saw 3000 environmental companies participating. The panel held a “future dialog” dubbed: “Weather extremes – are we defenseless?” Bojanowski reports that the panel spoke of which weather extremes have been on the increase, but how they kept silent about this still being very much in dispute among climate scientists.

One panel member was none other than Potsdam climate alarmist/skeptic attack dog, Stefan Rahmstorf.

Unmentioned by the panel, Bojanowski writes, was the fact that the UN “could not detect any relationship between floods and storms and global warming“.

Shameless exploitation/hypocrisy

Unfortunately Spiegel — in its otherwise praiseworthy article — failed to mention two other parties who have a major stake in climate hype: the media (like Spiegel itself), who have profited immensely from spectacular climate claims, and politicians, who unabashedly exploit climate catastrophism to try to gain more control over society.

Spiegel has also shamelessly hyped climate change…front covers over the years.

And let’s not even bring up the wind and solar energy industry, where trillions have been committed in part based on gross climate alarmism of the sort Spiegel has long peddled (see Figure above).

“…..RMS, a multimillion-dollar company that helps insurers estimate hurricane losses and other risks, brought four hand-picked scientists together in a Bermuda hotel room.

There, on a Saturday in October 2005, the company gathered the justification it needed to rewrite hurricane risk. Instead of using 120 years of history to calculate the average number of storms each year, RMS used the scientists’ work as the basis for a new crystal ball, a computer model that would estimate storms for the next five years.

The change created an $82 billion gap between the money insurers had and what they needed, a hole they spent the next five years trying to fill with rate increases and policy cancellations.

RMS said the change that drove Florida property insurance bills to record highs was based on “scientific consensus.”

The reality was quite different……..

……Joining them was British climate physicist Mark Saunders, who argued that insurers could use model predictions from his insurance-industry-funded center to increase profits 30 percent.

The rock star in the room was Kerry Emanuel, the oracle of climate change from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Just two weeks before Katrina, one of the world’s leading scientific journals had published Emanuel’s concise but frightening paper claiming humanity had changed the weather and doubled the damage potential of cyclones worldwide……”

Please don’t “fail to mention” that most of us normal people aren’t at all alarmed by climate changed and react very calmly by implementing policies and supporting greener products, just because that is the reasonable thing to do.

Also, the media I watch and read isn’t constantly alarmed like certain 24/7 newscycle TV stations and tabloid newspapers. You should think about your media consumption if you feel that is the case.

and politicians who shamelessly exploit climate catastrophism to take more control over society.

And there it is again … the conspiracy and anti-government thinking. What control are you talking about?

So you don’t like globalization? Nations above everything? Big surprise. And you think 9 people decide about everything that leads to more control over society? Sounds definitely like something a conspiracy theorist would say.

Global problems will eventually need global solutions. Get over it.

Looking forward to transforming the planet while you guys victimize yourself a cry for the “good old times”. Everything new is bad, right?

Most of the worlds problems are caused by those wishing to globalise, rather than fix problems where they are.

That is where problems should be fixed.

Third world countries should be “helped” with RELIABLE electricity systems that allow for economic progress.

The AGW Agenda has funders like the World-bank withholding that funding, quite disgusting.

Fortunately, China has seen that the Asia region NEEDS this development and is funding several hundred coal fired power stations in different countries, also helping out in some African countries with gas and coal power.

Unreliable power is NO USE for progress, it STUNTS progress.

Unreliable electricity is UNSUSTAINABLE, unless backed up by 100% back-up from reliable supply as places like South Australia are finding.

Is Energiewende a global solution? What’s it done (other than raise costs) for Germany and the world so far?

Looking forward to transforming the planet while you guys victimize yourself a cry for the “good old times”.

Many of us don’t really want what your selling as “transforming the planet”. I like inexpensive, reliable, readily-available energy. So do industries. So do lower income people. I also like pristine landscapes without cement-and-steel monstrosities slaughtering 4 million bats a year. Why should we want what you’re selling? What’s attractive about what you and the pro-wind turbine people offer?

California’s high penetration of intermittent renewables such as solar and wind are likely a key factor in higher prices. Economists agree that “the dominant policy driver in the electricity sector [in California] has unquestionably been a focus on developing renewable sources of electricity generation.”

High levels of renewable energy penetration make electricity expensive around the world, not just in California. As Germany deployed high levels of renewables over the last 10 years it saw its electricity prices rise 34 percent. Today, German electricity costs twice as much as that in neighboring France.

Everything new is bad, right?

What are you even talking about? Wind turbines are 19th century technology. So is hydropower. Biomass has been used for fuel throughout human history. In 1800, 94% of energy consumed came from renewables. Today it’s around 15%, most of it wood-burning. New? You and your ilk want us to go back to the days when 90% of people living in China toiled in poverty (just a few decades ago) and burned wood for fuel versus today, when 600 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a consequence of the explosion in cheap, reliable energy (fossil fuels) there. Sick.

The UN does not impress anyone any more. Some decades ago, there was perhaps some hope of a sensible, balanced global authority, but today it has degenerated into a money-grabbing mob. Some agencies are worth continuing, but the main organisation should just be abolished. Hopefully the UN will move to somewhere like Zimbabve, and we can forget all about them. Globalism is nothing new, it has ben with us for centuries in trade, and in power projection. But there is no evidence of global political systems being better than national ones. And of course, as almost one third of all humans live in two nations that show absolutely no inclination towards a global state system, the whole idea is outdated.

Globally, climate change doesn’t even register as a problem according to a United Nations poll of 10 million people. It consistently ranks last as a concern for the average citizen.

It surely isn’t the main problem we are facing. Yet you make it sound like a train full of people that didn’t saw the oncoming wall should be left alone. The wall will surely not be a problem in the future, right?

Why do you think a warm, green, high-crop-yielding planet with less extreme weather and more land area above sea level in recent decades…is problematic, SebastianH?

If the current state would be a problem you’d see all kinds of action. Doing something when shit already hit the fan is usually a sign you’ve started too late, Kenneth.

Remember those exponential growth lessons? If you consume something at exponential rates you will have consumed just half of the resource one doubling before the end. Quarter the resource two doublings before the end. Do you think consumers of that resource will realize that the end is near 3 or 4 doublings before the end? Better transition to a more sustainable future sooner than later, I’d say.

Is Energiewende a global solution? What’s it done (other than raise costs) for Germany and the world so far?

It dramatically increased PV production and thereby accelerated the learning curve. Other countries have been doing similar things to the same effect. It was a kickstarter if you will … spending money when each Dollar/Euro ist worth the most, at the beginning of development.

High levels of renewable energy penetration make electricity expensive around the world

It does, but only temporary and it’s because all the costs are transparent. Subsidies and external costs to other sources of energy aren’t that obvious on your bill. You pay them via different channels.

The Kickstarter worked (and we are will hit 100000 MW new installations in 2018 and the costs have become even lower). A few year from now this will be unstoppable and you still imagine that people will get tired and revert back to less than 1% renewables in the 2040s … talk about living in a bubble.

I like inexpensive, reliable, readily-available energy. So do industries. So do lower income people

Solar is already cheaper than most newly build fossil fuel or nuclear power plants. Yeah, that doesn’t include storage, but we won’t need storage for about another 10-15 years, so why demand it? A nuclear power plant couldn’t provide the changing demand over the day either without significant amounts of storage or “backup” generators.

About reliability, when did energy/electricity become unreliable? So far no rolling blackouts that alarmists – like you skeptics clearly are – feared and warned us off.

cement-and-steel monstrosities slaughtering 4 million bats a year

Yeah, “slaughtering”. Give us more alarmist strong words! Can’t have enough of that language, really. Who is “destroying” what? What is “devastating”? Who gets “crushed”? Who is “slamming” what?

What are you even talking about? Wind turbines are 19th century technology. So is hydropower. Biomass has been used for fuel throughout human history. In 1800, 94% of energy consumed came from renewables. Today it’s around 15%, most of it wood-burning. New?

You mean this in a serious way, don’t you? You think price competetive MW wind turbines and cheap mass produced photovoltaics are an old thing?

You and your ilk want us to go back to the days when 90% of people living in China toiled in poverty (just a few decades ago) and burned wood for fuel versus today, when 600 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a consequence of the explosion in cheap, reliable energy (fossil fuels) there.

“You and your ilk” … right. More cursing please! And more straw mans while you are at it!

I (“and my ilk”) want us to go forward, you however want us to be stuck in the past. Continue as if there is no long term problem that needs fixing and completely ignoring the cost and new installations development. Even China realized that it needs to go forward to a cleaner, more sustainable future.

It surely isn’t the main problem we are facing. Yet you make it sound like a train full of people that didn’t saw the oncoming wall should be left alone. The wall will surely not be a problem in the future, right?

What is this wall you’re talking about? And how does the train full of people that didn’t “saw” it (Huh?) relate to the average citizens’ nil concern about climate change?

If the current state would be a problem you’d see all kinds of action.

So when do you think climate problems might occur…since they haven’t in the “current state”? And what action would actually make a difference in changing the weather and glacier melt and sea level rise and hurricane intensities?

Doing something when s___ already hit the fan is usually a sign you’ve started too late, Kenneth.

Started doing what too late? What is this problem we’re supposed to be concerned about and for which we can actually do something about? The Earth is greening. Crops are abundant. The Earth’s coasts are expanding and rising above sea level in recent decades. Greenland and Antarctica combined have contributed 0.59 of an inch to sea level rise since 1958. 100s of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Less than 1 species per decade has gone extinct this century (vs. 16 per decade during the 16th to 20th centuries). What are the alarmists telling us that we need to be alarmed about?

Is Energiewende a global solution? What’s it done (other than raise costs) for Germany and the world so far?

It dramatically increased PV production and thereby accelerated the learning curve.

The learning curve may not be what you’d hoped. Other countries may be looking at the failures and high costs associated with Energiewende and noting that it doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions…and then they are “learning” this is not the way to go.

…cement-and-steel monstrosities slaughtering 4 million bats a year

Yeah, “slaughtering”. Give us more alarmist strong words!

Says the same person who claims 30,000 species are going extinct every year due to climate change…

The slight inconvenience of living with the consequences of continued warming. And no, the argument “warming would be positive” doesn’t count.

didn’t “saw” it (Huh?)

didn’t see

So when do you think climate problems might occur…since they haven’t in the “current state”? And what action would actually make a difference in changing the weather and glacier melt and sea level rise and hurricane intensities?

And you ask me about what we should do? That should be pretty obvious by now. Even to you … or is this another trolling attempt?

Started doing what too late?

Transitioning to a sustainable economy.

What are the alarmists telling us that we need to be alarmed about?

Apparently, you don’t need to be alarmed in your bubble. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here …

The learning curve may not be what you’d hoped. Other countries may be looking at the failures and high costs associated with Energiewende and noting that it doesn’t reduce CO2 emissions…and then they are “learning” this is not the way to go.

Says the same person who claims 30,000 species are going extinct every year due to climate change…

You are still running with that made up story? You even quote me and don’t recognize that this is not what I wrote/said? How crazy is that?

It’s not 1% renewables in the 2040s. It’s 1% of global energy consumption share from wind and solar in the 2040s. I’ll assume you misrepresented my position intentionally, given your track record.

Ha, and now he gets pedantic about wording. Who would have thought It doesn’t really matter Kenneth and apparently context isn’t your thing. Every sentence/word stands for itself and therefore you can quote whatever sounds useful to you and leave the rest out (some would call it cherry picking). Anyway, I was writing about PV.

In the English language, “ilk” is not a curse word. Is it a curse word where you live?

“You and your ilk” is definetly a curse phrase. Another example of you picking out single words and ignoring the context they stand in.

Apparently you didn’t realize that every time people like us see you’re linking to that Al Gore-sponsored FOUR. HIROSHIMA. BOMBS. PER. SECOND. alarmist blog, we don’t bother to click on it, as we are aware of its merits.

Back in the 1970s, governments were writing the same sorts of alarmist reports about the consequences of global cooling that you naively believe in today because of global warming. Crop failures, famine, droughts, extreme weather…were all thought to be attributed to the “deteriorating” climate…which at the time meant cooling. See, this was before the data was manipulated to show that the cooling never happened.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,1974 (1)http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/environment/potentialtrends.pdf
“Potential Implications of Trends in World Population, Food Production, and Climate”According to Dr. Hubert Lamb–an outstanding British climatologist–22 out of 27 forecasting methods he examined predicted a cooling trend through the remainder of this century. A change of 2°-3° F. in average temperature would have an enormous impact. [pg. 28, bottom footnote]

A number of meteorological experts are thinking in terms of a return to a climate like that of the 19th century. This would mean that within a relatively few years (probably less than two decades, assuming the cooling trend began in the 1960’s) there would be brought belts of excess and deficit rainfall in the middle-latitudes; more frequent failure of the monsoons that dominate the Indian sub-continent, south China and western Africa; shorter growing seasons for Canada, northern Russia and north China. Europe could expect to be cooler and wetter. … [I]n periods when climate change [cooling] is underway, violent weather — unseasonal frosts, warm spells, large storms, floods, etc.–is thought to be more common.
—
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 1974 (2)http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf“A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems”The western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climate change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) – an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world [the Little Ice Age]. … The world is returning to the type of climate which has existed over the last 400 years. That is, the abnormal climate of agricultural-optimum is being replaced by a normal climate of the neo-boreal era.

Because of the global cooling trend, the lower edge of the circumpolar vortex has in recent years stayed farther south during the summer, in the position shown by the smaller band near the equator. It has kept the high pressure zones farther south too, blocking the monsoons out of regions where they are vital to the survival of hundreds of millions of people.

Early in the 1970s, a series of adverse climatic anomalies occurred:
* The world’s snow and ice cover had increased by at least 10 to 15 percent.
* In the eastern Canadian area of the Arctic Greenland, below normal temperatures were recorded for 19 consecutive months. Nothing like this had happened in the last 100 years.
* The Moscow region suffered its worst drought in three to five hundred years.
* Drought occurred in Central America, the sub-Sahara, South Asia, China, and Australia.
* Massive floods took place in the midwestern United States

Within a single year, adversity had visited almost every nation on the globe.
——————————————–
Why do people like you — the perpetually unskeptical — fall for this alarmist stuff every single time it’s tried?

And you ask me about what we should do? That should be pretty obvious by now.

No, I asked what the effect of what you are proposing to do will have. What looming catastrophe will using more wind and solar than we do today mitigate?

You have no idea what a learning curve is, right?

Quite familiar with learning curves. I just don’t agree with you that what is happening in Germany encourages other countries to follow their lead. Why would extremely high energy costs with no CO2 emissions reductions be a model for other countries to follow?

Says the same person who claims 30,000 species are going extinct every year due to climate change…

You are still running with that made up story? You even quote me and don’t recognize that this is not what I wrote/said? How crazy is that?

You keep on claiming you didn’t write that and I keep providing the exact quote and link, asking you to tell me what “we are already at or over that rate” meant if it didn’t mean what I wrote, but then you just repeat your claim that you never wrote that. So, from here on, I’ll just be writing this: “This from the very same person who wrote this about 30,000 species extinctions per year… SebastianH: ‘Regarding extinction of species, why do you think 30,000 species lost per year is a big number? We are already at or over that rate.’” Perhaps then you’ll explain why this means something other than what you wrote.

It’s not 1% renewables in the 2040s. It’s 1% of global energy consumption share from wind and solar in the 2040s. I’ll assume you misrepresented my position intentionally, given your track record.

Ha, and now he gets pedantic about wording.

Why is it acceptable to purposely mischaracterize what I wrote? You know I didn’t write that about all renewables, but only wind and solar. Renewables currently make up around 15% of energy consumption share. Wind and solar <1%. Lumping them together as if they're one in the same is exactly the kind of disingenuous behavior you are known on this site for. That's why we largely assume that most of what you write is made up. Your track record is pathetic.

“You and your ilk” is definetly a curse phrase.

What are you even talking about?! In what country is it a “curse phrase”? From how it’s used with those of my ilk (i.e., my culture, my people), it’s not pejorative in any way. It basically just means “those whom I associate with” or “the people who are on my side”. Look it up. Curse word?! Curse phrase?! Are you just grasping at straws, any straws, to try to make yourself out to be a victim? Sheesh.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.

You can’t be bothered to click on any link apparently. And weren’t you the one who tried to tell me that it’s about the content not the author? And who knows who the author of the rebuttal even is, after all you didn’t follow the link. And writing in all caps doesn’t project confidence either …

Back in the 1970s, governments were writing the same sorts of alarmist reports about the consequences of global cooling

Sure, if you say so. Are you aware that it was a minority that proclaimed “global cooling” back in those days? But “you and your ilk” like to emphasize the fringe stuff, don’t you 😉

Why do people like you — the perpetually unskeptical — fall for this alarmist stuff every single time it’s tried?

Oh the irony … falls for every nonsense without the hint of skepticism shining through, but accuses me of “falling for stuff”.

No, I asked what the effect of what you are proposing to do will have.

No, you didn’t. You asked, “what action would actually make a difference”. Look it up!

Quite familiar with learning curves. I just don’t agree with you that what is happening in Germany encourages other countries to follow their lead.

Couldn’t be bothered to click the link, claims he knows and then demonstrates he has no idea. No, a learning curve in production has nothing to do with countries doing whatever other countries did. Not at all.

I’ll just be writing this: “This from the very same person who wrote this about 30,000 species extinctions per year

Do that. That’s what I wrote.

Perhaps then you’ll explain why this means something other than what you wrote.

Why would it mean something other than what I wrote? Certainly not that CO2 is causing this.

Why is it acceptable to purposely mischaracterize what I wrote? You know I didn’t write that about all renewables, but only wind and solar.

Nope, wind + solar made up 36 Mtoe of the renewables increase from 2015 to 2016. That increased their share by 0.27%. It’s approaching 2% if it has not already surpassed that mark. And both of them are still growing exponentially.

That’s why we largely assume that most of what you write is made up. Your track record is pathetic.

You may not realize it in your bubble, but this is how blogs like the one you are posting on are viewed. It’s entirely your imagination that is making you believe that all others are making stuff up. It’s you Kenneth. All the time! Misquoting, misunderstanding … all the time.

Are you just grasping at straws, any straws, to try to make yourself out to be a victim? Sheesh.

Are you now just copying me?

Anyway, “you and your ilk” (German: “du und deine Sorte” or “du und deinesgleichen”) definetly has a negative connotation in Germany. And searching that term online I can not find any positive examples. Can you?

Are they really doing that?

Yes.

We’ll see. As with the rest of what you believe is happening or not, time will tell us if you were right or wrong. Hopefully the world is wise enough to ignore you and your ilk.

I guess you’ve never read Newsweek, Time, Spiegel etc. in 1974. There they all spoke of a consensus among scientists that the globe was cooling. The data showed that this had been the case for close to three decades. Even Leonard Nimoy produced a TV segment warning of a coming ice age.

You can’t be bothered to click on any link apparently. And weren’t you the one who tried to tell me that it’s about the content not the author?

That standard applies to scientific papers. I read skepticalscience routinely as a means of understanding what your side believes. I just don’t bother to read the link when you cite it. I just roll my eyes, as do many of the readers here. FOUR. HIROSHIMA. BOMBS. PER. SECOND.

Are you aware that it was a minority that proclaimed “global cooling” back in those days?

That’s what you’ve been told. I’ve researched it extensively. It was a very widely held viewpoint, especially during the 1971-1977 period.

https://notrickszone.com/2016/09/13/massive-cover-up-exposed-285-papers-from-1960s-80s-reveal-robust-global-cooling-scientific-consensus/The PCF08 authors decided that when “quantifying the consensus” (by counting publications), a scientific paper could only be classified as a “cooling” paper if it projected that future temperatures would (continue to) decline, or that a “full-fledged ice age was imminent.” Papers published during the arbitrarily chosen 1965-’79 era that affirmed the climate had already been cooling for decades, that this cooling wasn’t a positive development, and/or that the effects of CO2 on climate were questionable or superseded by other more influential climate change mechanisms … were not considered worthy of classification as a “cooling” paper, or as a paper that disagreed with the claimed “consensus” that said the current (1960s-’70s) global cooling will someday be replaced by CO2-induced global warming.

Of course, the global cooling scare during the 1970s was not narrowly or exclusively focused upon what the temperatures might look like in the future, or whether or not an ice age was “imminent”. It was primarily about the ongoing cooling that had been taking place for decades, the negative impacts this cooling had already exerted (on extreme weather patterns, on food production, etc.), and uncertainties associated with the causes of climatic changes.

By tendentiously excluding 1960s and 1970s publications that documented global cooling had been ongoing and a concern, as well as purposely excluding papers that suggested the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 forcing is weak or questionable relative to other mechanisms, the authors could brazenly claim that there were only 7 papers published in the scientific literature between 1965 and 1979 that disagreed with the “consensus” opinion that global warming would occur at some point in the future (due to CO2 increases). According to PCF08, there were 44 papers that fell into the latter warming-is-imminent-due-to-CO2 category from 1965-’79, ostensibly entitling them to claim that dangerous anthropogenic global warming projections “dominated” the scientific literature even then.

As will be shown here, the claim that there were only 7 publications from that era disagreeing with the presupposed CO2-warming “consensus” is preposterous. Because when including the papers from the 1960s and 1970s that indicated the globe had cooled (by -0.3° C between the 1940s and ’70s), that this cooling was concerning (leading to extreme weather, drought, depressed crop yields, etc.), and/or that CO2’s climate influence was questionable to negligible, a conservative estimate for the number of scientific publications that did not agree with the alleged CO2-warming “consensus” was 220 papers for the 1965-’79 period, not 7. If including papers published between 1960 and 1989, the “non-consensus” or “cooling” papers reaches 285.

Welcome to the world of normal people. Rolling our eyes at the nonsense posted on skeptic blogs since the beginning of time …

I’ve researched it extensively. It was a very widely held viewpoint, especially during the 1971-1977 period.

I doubt it. You are only “finding” what you want to find.

Please read the article…

No, I’ll just assume that nonsense is written there, as I regularly read that blog you linked to and have to roll my eyes about the wild theories posted there. IMAGINE. SOME. WORDS. IN. CAPITAL. LETTERS.

Gosselin, it is better explainable (Asked) “Do you want or do you even “care” about being “informed””, which I believe (Make that know) the above could care [ LESS ] as all of the leftists could care less ??? !

The same will lie to their graves even going so far as the lie themselves straight in to Hell because that is all they know of !!!

I just updated the post. While writing it became clear to me that Spiegel itself is very guilty of the hype that Boj accuses Munich Re, Bahn, etc..
So I added a chart at the end of the post depicting famous Spiegel covers. LOL…No hype there, right!

Thank you again Pierre. This is great news. Slowly the winds are changing, and more and more of those who have been silent about their doubts of the climate disaster -self-imposed or otherwise- are now speaking out. Eventually, even politicians will see that there is no more to get out of this scare, and drop the whole charade.

Still, this journalist has contributed some valuable articles about climate earlier too. However, it is bit shocking to be reminded of the global warming alarmist front page from 1986. 30 years ago, and nothing of that scare stuff has happened. Nor does Spiegel seem to have applied any self-criticism. But why should they? The truth is only useful if it generates income. Scary click-bait and its predecessors are much better for keeping the money coming in.

Already in the 1860s, the playwright Henrik Ibsen let a newspaper editor exclaim the fateful words: “I can’t make a living from a good newspaper!” Little has changed since then.

These admissions come as no surprise.
What started as a leftist conspiracy to transfer money from the “rich” Western nations to various 3rd. World kleptocracies, via the U.N., has been co-opted into the biggest scam in history, siphoning money from the taxpayer to the snake-oil salesmen of “green” technology and insurance rip-offs.
Seb, I’m surprised you would support such an obvious capitalist fraud.

Do you have any information of the status of the UN Green Fund? The fund that is supposed to distriubte lots of bilions of dollars every year from 2020? That is quite soon. One would think that the media is filled with happy news about over-zealous donations. But there is very little written about it. Maybe it is a conspiracy that hinders the money from rolling in?

Perhaps Sebastian will the consider the perspective of THREE PhD students in climatology during the 1970s – two at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, one at the University of London – on the matter. All three TELL ME that cooling, during their time there, WAS THE CONSENSUS.

While I was only a teenager during the 1970s, earth sciences was my interest, and amateur astronomy my specialty (although only one in our student group, became an astrophysicist now at Carleton College in Minnesota, many friends did do doctorates in physics) – I was piqued by the controversy, but unpersuaded by the paucity of evidence to support the hypothesis severe global cooling.

MY skepticism then (during the fad ‘science’ of AGW) as now went rewarded. At least intellectually.

If you can’t be persuaded by abstract (and yes, to some extent arbitrary meta-studies), how about those who were there then? – on the front lines of the science?

“And there it is again … the conspiracy and anti-government thinking. What control are you talking about? …”.
There’s no need for a “conspiracy”, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary who administered the Paris Agreement admitted it herself:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution …
… This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history” (Christiana Figueres 3 February 2015).
The “we” she refers to is a bunch of unelected UN bureaucrats apparently using Climate Change™ as a tool to change the course of human history — some hubris!
To be unperturbed by, let alone support, such a startling statement on intent is not “normal”.

It refers to all the normal people on this planet who recognize the fossil fuel bonanza can’t go on forever without consequences and who would rather transition to a sustainable future early. Once you realize that it’s inevitable, you’ll maybe also recognize that staying behind – like the U.S. president currently does – is not a good strategy in that global game.

Ok, usually Nazism is described this way, it doesn’t make it about the left just by exchanging “right” with “left” … you are definetely living on a different planet.

And no, the world is not led by “leftists”. Stop victimizing those who stand to lose something while we transition to a sustainable future. They aren’t victims. They have won big in the past decades and are still winning.

Seb, the best thing that has happened in the last two years is the election of Trump.
I don’t like him as a person, but he is certainly hitting the right targets, including the cult of global warming.
With America no longer shooting itself in the foot with insane green policies, Trump is revitalises its industry, with cheap, low pollution gas.
They will actually reduce CO2 emissions more than the virtue-signaling Europeans with their UN-inspired economic suicide note.

A comment of general interest on the Der Spiegel story and Munich Re.
“One company Bojanowski cites is the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, which annually publishes a report on ‘natural catastrophes’….” Isn’t this expected by folks paying attention?

For example, as a reader of Roger A Piekle, Jr’s blog a decade ago, wasn’t the failure of “Munich Re” to produce data that supported alarmist views of changing weather and climate a noted and perhaps recurrent fact repotted there?

That’s my recollection, at least.

AGW scientists and the IPCC would announce alarm, papers would get shoved under or through the deadline. When the later paper of data is released, the conclusions are nowhere found to support them.

Put in slang terms….”SQUIRREL!” Political diversions for action junkies, rubes, and uncritical “motivated reasoners.” as well as practitioners of groupthink.

But certainly to see this reality finally confronted in Germany is truly welcome.

Thanks, Orson. I wasn’t familiar with the term “motivated reasoning,” but after looking it up, I see a high degree of similarity between that and much of the “reasoning” of SebastianH.

“Motivated reasoning is confirmation bias taken to the next level. Motivated reasoning leads people to confirm what they already believe, while ignoring contrary data.”http://skepdic.com/motivatedreasoning.html

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